Ponti's Indispensable Quality
— By Brian Kish, Curator and Specialist in 20th Century Italian Architecture and Design, Consultant to the Gio Ponti Archives since 2006
Over the course of nearly fifty years, Gio Ponti wrote extensively on interiors and furniture to promote his philosophy of 'living well' in the Italian domestic realm, according to a perspective that he had developed in editorial work for his own publication, Domus. The two long overlooked pieces presented here clearly illustrate Ponti's vision: the coffee table of 1948 (lot 26) and the desk of 1950 (lot 27), both designed in the immediate post war period, are useful examples to expand our understanding of this most versatile 20th century Italian architect. While all of Ponti's interior design projects demonstrate his concerns in the visual field as a whole, his typologies evolved towards an increasingly pictorial approach that led him to develop a methodology akin to that of an artist.
The lots considered here evolved from his late 1940s Metaphysical interiors for the Cremaschi and Lucano apartments where the edges were blurred between walls and furniture, sometimes dissolved by oceans of root wood surfaces or muted by assertive Piero Fornasetti fabric patterns. Owing to all of these features, they are key to a period when Ponti opens up his next chapter, clearing the way for custom design to attain the long-sought glow of fine art. These surreal, and somewhat hybrid pieces give us a sense of his intense devotion to experimentation. Both the coffee table and desk contain geometric recesses: a hollowed out rectangle on the top surface of the coffee table and a triangle for the top left side of the desk. These voids are mysterious in that they were never meant to be filled, as Ponti did not specify at what their function was to be. Essentially, they allude to the presence of absence, an essential feature of the Metaphysical art of Giorgio de Chirico and Mario Sironi.
The 1948 coffee table seamlessly combines a softly contoured trapezoidal top with three tapering legs that support it into one surprisingly solid design. Unlike the gridded series of lattice tables with open and visually emphasised tectonics, this coffee table is a closed and hermetic form. Its ovoid form is veneered with a sumptuous, radica Ferrarese, a rare root wood from Ferrara. The placing of these veneers in an irregular pattern is a departure from the book-matched veneers of his prewar designs: again, this new method aimed to slightly distort the direct reading of form by obliterating the edges.
A variation of the present coffee table in a watercolour drawing by Gio Ponti for the first-class ballroom of the ocean liner Conte Biancamano, circa 1948.
Drawing: © Gio Ponti Archives / Archivio storico Gio PontiPonti created variations of this coffee table later in 1948 for the first-class lounge of the ocean liner, 'Conte Biancamano'. Meanwhile the first iteration was most likely destined for Antonio Fornaroli, his business partner in the architecture firm PFR and made by Fratelli Radice, who were among the group of his three preferred ebanisti together with Giordano Chiesa and Angelo Mangoni of Quarti, all known for their exceedingly high-quality standards.
The present model coffee table from Ponti's monograph Espressione di Gio Ponti, Milan, 1954.
Image: © Gio Ponti Archives / Archivio storico Gio PontiThe 1950 desk was conceived during an intensely productive phase soon after Ponti started working with RIMA, coming up with dramatic and complex chair designs in steel for the second Montecatini high rise office building in Milan (1947-51). Even inside his vast PFR atelier there were often casual groupings of prototypes for chairs, stools, and side tables, all structured with complex variations of metal supports. The present desk shows Ponti mainly preoccupied with the pictorial complexity of its design beyond the necessity of a rigid painted steel support. The contoured top can either be read as an aerodynamic shape or as an ancient Roman meander pattern. Ponti had already used this undulating form in his late 1930s and mid- 1940s furniture such as credenzas, desks, or shelves but then it invariably read in profile, and not in flattened out perspective as in the RIMA desk. Like the 1948 coffee table, the desktop is veneered in rich radica Ferrarese but arrayed in varying book-matched and irregular placements. The total effect converges and spills across the meandering contoured top before meeting a straight grained lighter walnut strip at the edge. This light wood grain then wraps over the entire side perimeter, covering the two front drawers. The delirious complexity of Ponti's wooden desktop is a perfect counterpoint to the harmonious and resolved geometries of the lower metal frame. Here two vertical supports meet two lateral feet whose triangular profile is repeated at the upper drawer handles, in a surge of virtuosity that confers a lightness to the overall design that is emblematic of effortless Pontian agility.
''Surface design is the illustration of illusiveness that Ponti considered an
indispensable quality of architecture.''— Salvatore Licitra, from Gio Ponti, Cologne, 2021, p. 277
Over the last few years there has been mounting interest in Ponti's poetics of the unexpected in tandem with avant-garde overtones, whereby formal wit turns into an entertaining spectacle. With all of these objects, we truly find ourselves in a whirlwind of influences with enigmatic results.Provenance
Private collection, Venice
Gifted from the above to the present owner, 1950sLiterature
Daria Guarnati, ed., Aria d’Italia: Espressione di Gio Ponti, Milan, 1954, n.p.
Artist Biography
Gio Ponti
Italian • 1891 - 1979
Among the most prolific talents to grace twentieth-century design, Gio Ponti defied categorization. Though trained as an architect, he made major contributions to the decorative arts, designing in such disparate materials as ceramics, glass, wood and metal. A gale force of interdisciplinary creativity, Ponti embraced new materials like plastic and aluminum but employed traditional materials such as marble and wood in original, unconventional ways.
In the industrial realm, he designed buildings, cars, machinery and appliances — notably, the La Cornuta espresso machine for La Pavoni — and founded the ADI (Industrial Designer Association). Among the most special works by Gio Ponti are those that he made in collaboration with master craftsmen such as the cabinetmaker Giordano Chiesa, the illustrator Piero Fornasetti and the enamellist Paolo de Poli.
26
Coffee table
circa 1948
Burr walnut-veneered wood, chestnut.
45.5 x 120 x 69 cm (17 7/8 x 47 1/4 x 27 1/8 in.)
Executed by Fratelli Radice, Milan, Italy. Together with a certificate of expertise from the Gio Ponti Archives.
Estimate
£25,000 - 35,000 ‡
Sold for £57,150
Antonia King
Head of Sale, Design
+44 20 7901 7944
Antonia.King@phillips.com
Design
London Auction 13 November 2024
